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I Built a Geography Trivia Game Into My Personal Site

April 5, 2026 · 3 min read

I made it far in the geography bee. Elementary school, middle school — world trivia was always my jam.

On planes, I'm the person ignoring the movie and playing the trivia game on the seatback screen. On Jeopardy, geography is where I mentally buzz in before the contestant finishes reading.

So when I was looking for the next thing to build on this site, a geography trivia game was an obvious choice.

What it is

GeoGame is a 30-second trivia sprint. US state capitals, world capitals, and continents — 176 countries in the question bank. +1 for correct, −1 for wrong. When time runs out, you see your score against the running average of everyone who's played.

Simple premise. Surprisingly hard to put down.

Why I built it this way

The game needed a database — scores had to persist somewhere, and the end screen comparison only means something if it's pulling from real data. I used Vercel Postgres (Neon under the hood) for the storage layer, which fit cleanly into the existing stack.

The schema is intentionally minimal: one table, one row per game played.

CREATE TABLE scores (
  id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
  score INTEGER NOT NULL,
  played_at TIMESTAMP DEFAULT NOW()
);

Two API routes handle everything. A POST writes the score when the timer expires. A GET returns the average across all games. No auth, no user accounts — anonymous by design. The friction of signing in would kill the impulse to play.

What I focused on

The technical infrastructure was straightforward. What took more thought was the game feel — the decisions that determine whether it's actually fun to play.

A few decisions that mattered:

  • Timer at 30 seconds. Long enough to get into a rhythm, short enough to stay urgent.
  • Score penalty for wrong answers. −1 creates real stakes. Without it, the optimal strategy is just to guess fast.
  • 800ms delay on wrong answers. You see the correct answer highlighted before the next question loads. Informative without being punishing.
  • Question mix across three categories. Rotating between state capitals, world capitals, and continents keeps it from feeling repetitive.

The question bank started at ~100 countries. I expanded it to 176 — essentially full global coverage — because getting asked the same capital twice in a 30-second run breaks the illusion.

Try it

🌎 GeoGame

My personal best is 11. Let me know if you beat it.